Bristol Airport announces best ever figures for June

BRISTOL Airport has announced it has just enjoyed its best June on record. Over the last month almost 650,000 passed through the terminal building at the Lulsgate airport making it the most successful June on record.

The airport said just over 646,000 passengers used the airport during the course of the month.

This represented a 3.34 per cent increase over the same period last year, which was also the previous record.

Passenger numbers for the last 12 months also reached 6.23 million, passing the record total for a calendar year which was recorded in 2008 just before the recession.

The airport has planning permission for a £120 million expansion which will include a larger terminal, extra car parking and a new public transport hub.

Particularly strong performance was seen on Aer Lingus Regional's Dublin service, which carried a total of 8,000 passengers in a calendar month for the first time.

The Dublin route links Bristol directly with New York and other US destinations and passengers can pass through US customs at Dublin Airport.

Strong year-on-year growth was also seen on bmi regional routes to Frankfurt and Munich, indicating that the airline's recently agreed deal with Lufthansa is generating additional traffic.

Another factor contributing to increased passenger numbers is believed to be the introduction of a larger aircraft on KLM's four times daily service between Bristol and Amsterdam.

The airline carried nearly 20,000 passengers on the route which opens up connections to hundreds of destinations worldwide through KLM's Schiphol hub.

June also saw the launch of a summer service between Bristol and Stockholm, operated by Scandinavian Airlines (SAS).

The twice-weekly flight is already proving popular with Scandinavian tourists as well as travellers from across the South West and South Wales visiting Sweden.

The outlook for the rest of summer is looking equally positive, with new facilities now in place to enhance the airport experience for passengers.

A brand new £6.5 million central walkway opened last week and includes four new pre-boarding zones serving up to six departure gates.

The 3,880 square metre structure connects directly to the departure lounge and is served by an escalator, six lifts and toilet facilities.

The design of the new facility takes into account the latest generation of twin-engine, wide-body jets, such as the Boeing 787, with provision made for the addition of an air-bridge for passengers boarding potential long-haul flights in future.

Shaun Browne, aviation director at Bristol Airport, said: "The strong performance across all airline sectors is particularly encouraging, with business, leisure and inbound traffic all contributing to June's record passenger numbers.

"New facilities are in place to ensure we maintain service levels as passenger numbers continue to grow, and we are already focusing on further improvements we can bring to the route network from Bristol."

3 comments

"Still having to drive to Stansted to get an easyjet flight to Bilbao..." You'd better move to Essex then, or to Bilbao. Despite the traditional knockers in the Bristol area for anything that shows the slightest sign of success the truth is that Bristol Airport offers far more routes and frequencies than any other English or Welsh non-London airport other than Manchester and Birmingham airports which both serve much bigger passenger catchments. I use Lulsgate and whilst it's certainly not perfect - I've yet to find such a beast in my fairly lengthy worldwide travels over many years - it ticks many boxes. It will never have a significant inter-continental scheduled network because of the proximity of Heathrow, even if the infrastructure at Lulsgate could take it. Even Filton (it didn't have one of the longest runways in the country - far from it - despite the perpetual myth to the contrary) would have needed a runway lengthening just like Birmingham airport that had a similar runway length to Filton and has just extended it by 400 metres to bid for more long haul travel. Only Manchester outside London has anything like a reasonable long haul network and it is but a tiny fraction of Heathrow's network. All other English and Welsh airports outside Manchester and Birmingham have no long haul scheduled routes apart from Newcastle to Dubai. So keep up the good work Bristol Airport.